and i was hiding until you came along [closed/complete] Characters: Lethe (lethe) and Hades (ofshadows) Date/Time: May 31 Location: Bellevue, Hades's room Rating: Lower medium Warnings: Mentions of suicide and violence. Summary: Lethe is adorable, and Hades is emotionally constipated.
What Hades knew about the ceiling was this: that it had the faint vestiges of a cobweb rotting away in one corner; that the imperfections in its gypsum tiles reminded him of a particular fractal algorithm; and that it did little to soothe the disturbances brought about by his recent death. His hands curled into fists under the thin hospital sheets, igniting phantom wounds that snaked around his arms where Menelaus had managed to cut him. He, the lord of the Underworld, master of shadows and of death, had died like any other mortal. Perhaps the manner of his death should have alarmed him more than the death itself - and, indeed, happier he would have been had his ruminations boiled down to details, minutes, how he'd gripped his spear or how he'd lost his footing.
But again and again he relived that moment, singular even though he could not truly pinpoint it, that moment when the curtain fell over his eyes, when his sentience (his soul) departed the network of nerves that ran under his skin. In that false death, he was more a god than he'd been in any of his mortal incarnations.
Unsettled, Hades hadn't realized his breathing had become more shallow or that the beep beep beep of his heart rate had skyrocketed. Glaring at a point beyond the ceiling, he took deep breaths, working as was rarely necessary to regain full control of himself. Lethe would be here soon, and it would not do to look any more pathetic than his situation merited. He'd surprised himself by requesting her presence; he did not care to look vulnerable in front of his subjects. But, somehow caught in the strange notion that she would understand, he found his fingers flying faster than his thoughts could follow, and before he knew it he'd called her to him, before even Persephone.
The attachment should have bothered him - that she seemed to need him more than Persephone did - but, perhaps mistakenly, he took it as his right as a king that his denizens should need him. Fed by the indignity of a body born younger than most others in his pantheon, he soaked her approval up like the insecure teenage boy that he was, all the time deluding himself into thinking that he still held power. However, the reality of the situation and of his feelings was lost on him as, finally, he returned to that state of fine-tuned control.
Though she had watched it, too far away and barely able to see what was happening over the crowd, Lethe couldn't quite believe it when Hades' lifeless (weak, human) body hit the ground. Not that she knew much about fighting, that was more the Makhai's expertise, but even she could tell he had been winning up until that point. Maybe she blinked at the wrong time, couldn't quite see what miniscule error Hades must had made for the tables to be turned so quickly and fatally, but the resulting spill of blood was burned into her mind. She had watched her grandmother and her uncle die as well (and won bets on them, would have preferred to have lost for Thanatos' sake) but none of the deaths had made her feel quite like his had. She had enough reasons to hate her own mortal form, but she now resented Hades' just as much, how easily it was destroyed and took Hades with it. But she never believed that this would be permanent, and though her eyes had teared up, she hadn't allowed herself to cry. Not even when she was alone, because that was stupid and human.
As soon as they returned to NYC, he was the first thing on her mind before she even had a chance to decide how she was going to deal with Raphaela. Needing to know how he was, if he needed anything. The moment she received Hades' summon, knowing it meant now and not whenever she felt like it because the god did not make idle requests, Lethe hopped off the subway she had been riding aimlessly for the last couple hours and was there before he had time to change his mind. Checking herself in as Andrus' sister, though likely nobody would have noticed or questioned her anyway, she wandered into his room and stared quietly for a few good moments, the sight of Hades in such a vulnerable position awkward. Part of her wished she brought something, hated arriving empty-handed, but that would have been excessive and stupid when there was nothing he asked for. Maybe just being there was enough.
Empty-handed or not, she had arrived, and almost immediately, Hades was besieged with... Was it comfort? Yet at the same time he felt off-kilter, unhappy to be confined to a hospital bed, ashamed by the dextrose hooked to his veins. Her name (both names) came to his lips, but it died before he could form the sounds.
"Sit," he said instead, eyes closing as if blinding himself to the hospital room would blind her to it. Hades would not know what to say unless prompted; it was so much easier to sit on the throne, to listen to the lives that were ending all around him, and to press his own questions than to lay his own thoughts down for the judgment of others. Lethe was much the same, he supposed, taking away until there had been nothing left to take.
How much would she take from him in this meeting, he wondered. With the morphine and whatever else making their steady way through his blood vessels, how easily would his thoughts fly apart? For her judgment. And strangely, it mattered that it was her judgment.
Though wondering if keeping her distance would be safer, not wanting to take advantage of Hades' drugged mental state, Lethe curled up in the visitor's chair and played with the corner of the crisp, sterile sheet. It was almost too tempting to reach out and take his troubles away as her own, but Lethe quickly withdrew her hands back into her lap. She'd never dare such an action against Hades, respecting him too much whether he was a god or otherwise.
"I watched it," she informed him, quietly.
His eyes flashed open to stare at her evenly, though the slight sheen over his gaze was not difficult to notice. "I miscalculated," he said, the cracked quality of his voice becoming more evident the more he spoke. "And then..."
He hadn't been thinking as he'd spoken, and he found himself in the rare dilemma of being lost for words. Good that it was Lethe first, he supposed - he didn't need to give Persephone more reasons to view him as a fumbling boy.
"I was free."
Hades' loss hardly shook her opinion of him, though she wouldn't say as much. He didn't need declarations of unwavering loyalty, because that would imply that it could be called into question. It seemed oddly intimate, being allowed to see Hades at his weakest, and Lethe felt a bit guilty for the glazed look in his eyes even if it was more the medication than herself. A lingering reminder of how exposed and fragile humanity was. That something as simple as a miscalculation could kill them, and how easily they could be jerked back to life and from one world to another at her great grandmother's sadistic whim. And they were powerless to resist, without any sort of choice in the matter.
"Free," she repeated wistfully, knowing exactly what he was speaking of, the feeling she experienced in the moments she was half asleep and her mind was still numb enough that she could block out any awareness of her surroundings or self and could almost trick herself into thinking nothing existed at all until her alarm brought reality crashing back in. Not being trapped in such a worthless state, unable to flow freely as she used to. The waters of Lethe weren't supposed to be held by any container, couldn't be captured, and yet here she was in a body that felt simultaneously too small and too large; gangly and awkward, with far too many sensations and annoying needs. She hadn't ever thought this was a problem for Hades, who was far more humanized and certainly stronger in will than her, but then she could always sense his frustrations of being so lacking in the control and dominion he used to hold. "So it's more than just a bruised ego."
She was correct in thinking that tangibility itself had not been a problem for him. Hades had always been a contained being; though at times he might have expanded into the shadows, he had been human in form. Better yet, the humans were godlike in form. But unlike the gods, humans were powerless, worthless, rodents that scurried about without purpose or value.
And he was one of them. Of course, it was more than a bruised ego, though his faith in his own abilities did not waver. In Rome, the one vestige of his powers had disappeared. Had he possessed it, that uncanny ability to move as the shadows did, there would have been no chance for the Spartan.
Hades pulled his left hand out from under the sheets, the line of dextrose following. He observed it as coolly as he could, though more than anything he wanted to rip out the needle piercing his skin. "More than that," he echoed, turning his hand over. "A bruised ego for a fragile container." There was the space of time wherein another person might have sighed as Hades set down his hand. "I was so close." So close to home, to the Underworld, where surely death itself would spit him out, would grant him life once more, life that never ran the risk of ending.
"It's never close enough, though, is it?" Lethe whispered, fingers lightly tracing along the IV with a quiet fascination. "When..." Lethe curled her hands back into her lap, wondering if it was even appropriate to share her own thoughts with Hades. She could never quite tell how personal she was allowed to be with him, where the line between minion and friend was crossed, never wanting to insult his authority. But maybe it was his state that encouraged her to go on, to speak more of her own past that she never brought up before. Not with him or anyone. "The first thing I remember, I was trying to escape. This body, by drowning it in the river," she laughed hollowly, holding a hand over her eyes and feeling stupid admitting that aloud. "But I couldn't, it hurt, and it made me even more resentful of existence that I needed to do something as simple as breathe."
Lethe stared down at her feet that she had unconsciously worked free from her shoes, always caught off guard that they were hers, how her toes responded as she wiggled them. "I still don't know why I haven't done it," but this wasn't supposed to be an admission of her suicidal fantasies, her inability to cope with her own existence. And she finally allowed herself to reach out and touch him, hand over his.
He was too weak to flinch from the contact, but there was a noticeable twitch before he pushed himself back into relaxation. This was human comfort, and loath as he was to take anything even distantly resembling pity, this was also Lethe, who had just spilled the depths of her past for his examination. He couldn't offer anything of similar weight - his whole life had been a rush of determination, to come to some semblance of power - and even if he'd had any he was unsure if he would be inclined to disclose it.
But in spite of his incapability of returning the gesture, he respected the plenty that she'd just done - had been doing - for him. He was not like his brother, who presided over what was literally his family without heed for the constituents' well-beings. The Underworld was tightly knit, and Hades was determined to keep it that way. So he accepted what she offered, thinking over the best way to articulate a response.
"It would only repeat," he said, finally. "As long as that woman is in power."
And then a margin of hesitation before he delved into something more warm than practical. "I am... glad you have not."
The twitch was almost enough to make Lethe withdraw once more, but she relaxed when Hades finally did, gently feeling the pulse of his blood through skin as the monitor beeped in time along with it. As if she had to keep confirming that he was still there, still alive. She silently thanked Khaos for that conflicted comfort, although none of this would have happened if it weren't for the goddess' interference. But was it so bad, experiencing life after only stealing fragmented glimpses of it as she wiped memories away from the dead? Was it so bad, holding onto Hades' hand as she never would have dared back when he was king and she was merely a river at the edge of Elysium? To breathe, to smile, to speak... None of it scared her as much as it did at the very hazy beginnings of her incomplete mortal memory, and if she could pinpoint a time in which she had started coping instead of fighting, it was when she met him. Had it been fate or chance?
"I don't know what I'd do without you," Lethe confessed, embarrassed as soon as she heard herself speak. She hadn't been hoping for reassurance, would have searched elsewhere if so, but Hades' words were ones she hoped not to soon forget.
The words struck Hades as overly sentimental. What would anyone in the Underworld do without him? He expected them to function as usual, to work together to facilitate the passage of the dead into the afterlife. To carry on as he had taught them to, and perhaps to crown Zagreus as the next King.
But then again, mortality in itself was overly sentimental, and he schooled the admonishment that had almost made its way out of his mouth. As a human, Lethe was more fragile than she'd ever been; she'd admitted as much, and it would be foolish on his part to treat her with his usual brusqueness yet expect a result that would not damage her.
"Thank you," he decided on, finally. They were not words he said often; neither were they lacking or overabundant in sentiment. There was a ghost of a smile on his face - another rarity - before the morphine took him under.